Abstract
The rise of digital and information technology has caused brands to consider the best digital marketing strategies to engage relevant target users on applicable social media platforms. Similarly, fashion brands have had to adjust to the digital sphere to better engage users by understanding digital marketing techniques and meeting user needs and preferences. Existing literature suggests that brands have adopted a Cause Marketing (CM) strategy by gearing marketing campaigns to social initiatives and sustainability. This is due to an increased social conscience among social media users, which is evident in trending social issues such as the rise of the BLM movement and #MeToo movements on social media platforms. Hence, brands adopt strategies to engage users’ social awareness on social media platforms. However, brands sometimes co-opt social issues to emotionally connect with an increasingly socially aware user while maintaining unfair, unequal and inequitable brand practices, a practice known as woke-washing.
This study focuses on the Muslim female identity due to fashion brands' co-option of Muslim identity, perhaps due to the controversy surrounding Muslim women’s head covering and face veils. This research explores woke-washing in the context of fashion brand, Nike's ‘You Can't Stop Us’ (2020) digital campaign. Studies on woke-washing about social issues confronting Muslim identity are limited; hence the rationale for this research is to focus on female Muslim identity. In the same light, limited studies exist concerning Muslim female social media user experiences regarding woke-washing.
In light of this research gap, this study intends to answer the research question: what are Millennial Muslim female social media user experiences regarding woke-washing in Nike's ‘You Can’t Stop Us’ (2020) campaign product? The research is underpinned by Desmet and Hekkert’s (2007:4) “general framework of product experience” to guide this study. The “general framework of product experience” positions three types or levels of experience, namely: 1) aesthetic experience – relating to sensory modalities, 2) experience of meaning, which pertains to meanings people attach to the product, and 3) the emotional experience, which is the feelings and emotions elicited from a product (Desmet & Hekkert, 2007:1).